Help installing FFvt3R heroes reskins?

[moni]

Hello!

I've started tinkering with custom content for FF2 and am having some trouble. Getting most custom meshes works like a charm, but I also have a few reskins of the FF heroes themselves (including a quick one I did myself) and these don't work properly :
- I see them in the CharacterTool2
- I see them in the in-game character editor when picking a skin
- I don't see them in-game (I get the hero's default skin)

I'm under Windows XP, using the Steam version of the game and I have the mod tools installed. I put the reskins in this directory :
...\Local Settings\Application Data\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich\Custom\Art\library\characters

But I also tried putting them in the game's directory itself and, while they appear just the same in lists, they don't work in-game either :/...

Oh and all reskins use TGAs. What am I possibly doing wrong?

[Tomato]

Just offhand, a few questions/suggestions

-Did you extract the "art.ff" file in ...\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich\Data to that same directory? It contains the FF2 meshes you put additional skins on to ...\Data\Art\library\characters, the default directory for all official meshes.
-Tgas are good, but FF2 is mostly compatible with DDS(though FF1 is still TGA only). Nine times out of ten TGAs work fine, but if a tga shows up pink in-game try converting to DDS

[moni]

I tried what you said : extracted art.ff and put the extra skins in the corresponding folders. Still no change :/

The really really weird part is how I actually get the right portrait in-game... just not the right skin. And no pink either, just the regular hero's skin. I have the feeling it somehow fails to load it right in-game and thus defaults to the standard one... but why can it still load it right in all the other parts of the game? Mystery!

== Quick update ==

I tried using the DDS versions that come with the game into said skin directories and yeah... it works. Looks like I need some DDS conversion to make it work (weird, I really thought it dealt with TGAs...)

== Update 2 ==

DDS solved it! Something tells me the game, in the case of the original heroes, looks specifically for DDS textures, as opposed to custom characters. Thanks for the help!

[GogglesPizanno]

Actually this is a known quirk.

You cant mix TGA and DDS skins on a mesh. SO if the skins for a particular mesh are all TGA, it works fine. If they are all DDS it works fine. If you have one skin that is TGA and others that are DDS, when you play in game, it defaults to whatever the standard skin is. As you figured out, and was mentioned, when in doubt try converting to DDS.

[moni]

Thanks for the clarification! I'll keep that in mind for the next times